Ribbons wrote:I watched the first season of this and loved it. It's a nice blend of funny and immensely disturbing.

I have not caught up on the rest of the series, because I'M ONLY ONE MAN, DAMMIT! But rest assured I will at some point.

I find it to be one of the most existential shows on tv, with real substance. it is just wrapped in a wonderfully crude and bizarre dressing. the ending of "Auto-erotic Assimilation" brought a tear or two to my eyes......i'm not ashamed to say it.

Ribbons wrote:I watched the first season of this and loved it. It's a nice blend of funny and immensely disturbing.

I have not caught up on the rest of the series, because I'M ONLY ONE MAN, DAMMIT! But rest assured I will at some point.

I find it to be one of the most existential shows on tv, with real substance. it is just wrapped in a wonderfully crude and bizarre dressing. the ending of "Auto-erotic Assimilation" brought a tear or two to my eyes......i'm not ashamed to say it.

Ribbons wrote:I watched the first season of this and loved it. It's a nice blend of funny and immensely disturbing.

I have not caught up on the rest of the series, because I'M ONLY ONE MAN, DAMMIT! But rest assured I will at some point.

I find it to be one of the most existential shows on tv, with real substance. it is just wrapped in a wonderfully crude and bizarre dressing. the ending of "Auto-erotic Assimilation" brought a tear or two to my eyes......i'm not ashamed to say it.

Definitely one of the funniest and smartest shows ever. From Mortys extended fragile condition after finishing his game of Roy, Mr Meeseeks, Mr Poopybutthole, Ricks zany catchphrases, the names of off world currency, to Jerry and his forbidden love of Sleepy Gary and the fact that everything looks like penis or balls on alien planets. Nothing else has ever tickled me quite the way this show does, I hope we have many years of new adventures still to come.

Christine N. Ziemba wrote:While we had Dan Harmon on the line for our Harmonquest feature, Paste wanted to clear up a couple of internet rumors about his other beloved shows, including clarity around the release date of Rick & Morty’s third season. Kept under wraps, some sites are reporting the show is scheduled for an August release. “That I can squash. I don’t see any parallel universe where August is a possibility,” Harmon says. “We’re a while from being able to give a hard date. Part of that is just that we’re still figuring it out as we work over here… And the other part of it is that it’s not our right to say because the network has their own strategies.”

And after a recent interview with Larry King, in which Harmon discussed the possibility of a Community movie, the web buzzed with headlines like, “A Community Movie Will Happen.”

Harmon says that it’s part of the current clickbait culture. “I’m as certain that [a movie] needs to happen and that it probably will happen given the love behind that show, the passion of the performers involved, and the likelihood of it having an audience should it happen. It seems likely to me that it is an inevitability, but boy, that sure is different from saying, ‘It is happening.’”

The only thing Paste knows for sure is that Harmon’s newest show, Harmonquest, is out on Seeso now.

Even if it runs only 3 seasons, Rick and Morty will go down as one of those lightning in a bottle shows that was brilliant from scene 1 to the final frame. There is not a one single bad episode of this show, and its balance of comedy and truly dark depression is nothing short of genius.

I just had to detach. And I took my time, too. I breathed in the cool night air. I looked at the handful of stars you can actually see through the glow of the Los Angeles sky. When your brain buzzes around a lot, sometimes you have to slow yourself down. And yes, my mind was racing, contemplating the sheer totality of what I had just seen. But more than that, it made me think deeply about my own limitations. For when you work in creative fields, you spend your whole life pursuing the notion of "a great idea." No, that's not just coming up with the raw nugget of cool ideas that are original or zeitgeisty, but more following through with developing them. Being sure that they capitalize on the tenets of drama, plotting, characterization, and ultimately tap into deep resonant meaning, all in the pursuit of making something truly great. And upon watching this latest episode of Rick & Morty, I was struck (as I often am with the show) with the pangs of helpless comparison. No, it is not a mere matter of jealousy, for that feeling only tends to come up when you fear that you offer no value and thus regularly exercise schadenfreude (cue the mass of writers who complain about other people's deals, etc). Instead, the act of watching an episode like "Pickle Rick" is simply humbling.

I've written about Rick & Morty before, a show whose genius moves so fast you can barely keep up with it. I'd argue it's actually different from, say, the work of Steven Moffat, which can so often land brilliantly, but at his worst, you feel him cheating and wanting to skip all the hard work that actually makes grand reveals functional. But with Rick & Morty, there's rarely a misstep and the math always adds up. Even at its rapid, ever-changing pace, the ideas being put forth fit the dramatized actions and conflicts, they speak to the inner turmoil of the characters, and they get expressed through often dark and heartbreaking catharsis. No, it's a not a show that wants to delight in the reveal, but instead slide into brilliant turns and clarifications as confidently and nonchalantly as Rick does. And while the genius of the show is often attributed to solely Harmon and Roiland, who are no doubt great, we know enough to know that's never the story. Like how last night's episode was written by the great Jessica Gao, it often takes an army. And even now I'm still thinking about what transpired. For the episode brought us squarely into what is the essential crux of the show: Rick's broken system of emotions and reward.

In truth, I'm hard pressed to think of a show that has as firm a grasp on psychological acumen as this one. Sure, many shows have brought us deep into the minds and hang-ups of their main characters, from The Sopranos, to Mad Men, to The Wire. Rick & Morty seems to pull it off while doubling down on the ingenious sci-fi conceits that drive each episode. It was "Pickle Rick" that really and truly brought this dynamic to the forefront.

For we have Rick Sanchez, the smartest man in the world, the abusive alcoholic, the man hell-bent on feeding his hunger and selfishness, begin the episode with the seemingly innocuous gag of having turned himself into a pickle. Of course, despite his insistence that it's just a fun goofy joke built for its own sake, it turns out that his pickle decision was really just an excuse to get him out of the family's first therapy session. The kids, implicitly understanding that he is lying (while the mother makes excuses, desperate for her father's love) all go off to therapy. But they also take the anti-pickle serum, mostly to test Rick's commitment to his lie. Rick's plan has clearly backfired, but it goes down the tube when his inability to move any part of him but his face leads to a series of comic errors that leave him alone at the bottom of a roach-infested sewer, with no hope of survival.

It's actually kind of remarkable to see Rick so powerless and fucked. But immediately his mind begins working and survival mode kicks in (which is really all he has). He lures a roach and savagely, desperately chews its head until it's dead. From there, he can tongue the bug's nervous system to move its limbs and move himself in turn (it's as gross as it sounds). But of course, Rick quickly adapts to the situation, making his way up the food chain of the sewers, creating a full bug exoskeleton, and then a rat exoskeleton, etc. But then, having conquered the sewers, he emerges to the surface and immediately finds himself in a movie-esque bad guy compound. And now "Pickle Rick" must prove his incredible Die-Hard-esque badassery to survive the horrible onslaught with a ballad of orgasmic violence. This story choice is obvious, for action movies are fun, indulgent, and toxic masculinity to a T. What's perhaps more is the episode manages to casually annihilate about 50 popular action tropes over the course of 14 minutes ("a name like scar" / "jaguar" / etc.), complete with coherent plotting that would put most of those movies to shame. But, of course, it's just all another traditional masculine path of avoidance. For all the while, his family sits in therapy, with Mom refusing to the address the lingering shadow of her father's absence.

But later, having finally survived the heroic escapades, Rick shows up to the therapy session, tired, beaten, and nearly dead. He's done so because this is the seeming right thing to do, but it's more that he's simply too tired to keep avoiding it and he wants the serum back (a mere band-aid for his current problem). Of course, Rick can't keep up his veil of complacency for long, and his disdain for therapy comes out. And it all manifests in what is perhaps the single most brilliant explanation of therapy I've ever seen from a piece of art (and please know that therapy has become something I've come to hold quite dear)...

BMD Apr. 11, 2014:RICK AND MORTY IS THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISIONFilm Crit Hulk explains why the Cartoon Network show is so damn good.